Prof. Amir Levinson

Research

Prof. Amir Levinson works on problems at the forefront of high-energy astrophysics, including: modeling of black hole activation; formation, dynamics and emission of relativistic jets, and applications to AGNs, microquasars and gamma-ray bursts; theory of radiation-mediated shocks and its application to shock breakout in various stellar explosions and to photospheric emission in GRBs; numerical simulations of AGN wind feedback in young galaxies; magnetar models of fast radio bursts.

Research achievements include: development of analytic and numerical methods that enable detailed calculations of the structure and emission of radiation-mediated shocks during breakout from exploding stars, in an attempt to predict the breakout signal in SNe and GRBs; studies of photospheric emission in GRBs from first principles; first-ever general relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of plasma production and consequent gamma-ray emission in a starved black hole magnetosphere, and its implications for gamma-ray emission from radio galaxies and RIAF sources, as well as for the physics involved in the production of Blandford-Znajek jets. Much of this work is in progress and its development continues.

Education

B.SC. in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1985

M.SC. in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1988

PhD in Physics, Ben Gurion University, 1992

Academic Appointments

Research Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, 1992-1995